On July 25, global market intelligence firm IDC issued the "Prediction and Analysis on the Chinese Banking Industry IT Solution Market between 2014 and 2018" report. According to the report, outstanding performance of consulting and technology services leader Pactera Technology International Ltd. led the firm to become the second largest domestic player, and overall third largest vendor, in theChina banking industry IT solutions market. The historical breakthrough demonstrates that Pactera has, through a transformation of its business, successfully recast itself as an industry leading banking IT solutions provider.
The report further notes that, in addition to becoming China's second largest banking IT solutions provider, Pactera made notable achievements in multiple segments as a result of the firm's fast growth and multi-pronged approach. The firm was ranked first in CRM and Call Center solutions, maintaining its traditional advantages in these two sectors. Pactera also overtook industry peers and ranked first in the payment and liquidation segments, and ranked a very close second in the Business Intelligence (BI) segment.
As China's 'Smart Finance' solutions leader, Pactera further developed its strengths through a series of strategic moves, undertaking several innovative initiatives in addition to its overall strategic transformation. With the accelerating pace of reform across the Chinese banking industry as the backdrop, coupled with breakthroughs in bringing new concepts to market, Pactera expanded its presence in the financial sector with a significant increase in market share attributable to the establishment of its '360 Degree Smart Finance' concept.
Feng Minggang, Executive Vice President and head of the firm's domestic finance business, said that despite a negative environment characterized by a slowdown in growth across the traditional banking industry amid rapid growth of the Internet finance sector, Pactera nevertheless achieved solid growth and strong results thanks to its effort to aggressively address its clients' business challenges. As a consequence, the firm's leading position in theAsia Pacific region's financial sector has been further consolidated and its technologies, solutions and services have been widely recognized by customers. The firm's leading positions in the Chinese banking industry IT solution rankings released by IDC are a result of technological innovations and investments, diversified financial solutions, a move up the value chain and improved capabilities to provide services. Over the last two years, Pactera maintained an overall growth rate of nearly 40 percent in the financial industry market.
Given financial reforms, interest rate liberalization, tightening of regulatory oversight and increasingly severe competition, the ongoing dis-intermediation across the sector is increasingly apparent. These factors have led to an enhancement of competitiveness across the sector and heightened differentiation of products and services through the application of information technologies. The timing is right for the financial sector to upgrade through innovation. With business and delivery centers providing services to the global market, Pactera strengthened its business capabilities inChina and across the Asia Pacific region while enhancing its value chain, helping customers to be innovative and transform their business by applying a SMAC (Social, Mobile, Data Analytics, and Cloud Computing) strategy. Targeted at the financial industry, the firm rolled out its comprehensive 'Smart Finance' strategy and solution framework including planning and methodologies. The framework is being widely adopted by customers in the banking, securities and insurance sectors.
Pactera has now expanded its business into both the online and offline sides of the banking industry IT solutions and service sectors, covering the industry's operations management, marketing and customer service segments, including BI, CRM, core banking, e-banking, call centers, financial testing, Internet finance, international settlements, payment platforms, risk management and financial consulting. Several new proprietary modular solutions are aggressively driving sustainable development of the sector. Pactera has a team comprising over 5,000 finance professionals providing services to more than one hundred commercial banks, while providing services to enterprise banks inChina and across the globe. These efforts serve to improve its customers' core competitiveness and to enhance their position in the industry. At the same time, Pactera works with its customers to build a new era of smart finance.
IDC predicts that China's banking industry IT solutions market will see a compound growth rate of 23.1 percent between 2014 and 2018 while the size of market scale is on track to reach just under42 billion yuan (approx. US$6.8 billion) by 2018.
China's banking industry market is on track to become a sizable opportunity for the software service industry. With the wide use of big data, the mobile internet, cloud computing and the adoption of social media, the financial industry is expected to continuously churn out innovative products and business models. The improvement of Pactera's rankings demonstrates the firm's success in its strategic move to focus on major industries. Pactera plans to continue collaborating with its banking customers and partners to build further on that success.
